My oldest
daughter turned 40 during the 1st week of July,2008 and several weeks prior
to that, I thought about making her something for her birthday. She
and her husband are both technology people in the 1st degree and I wanted
to find something that I could make that would be appropriate for her and
based on that interests that both she and her husband have.

While
looking through some of my woodworking magazines, I found something that
would be a perfect gift for her. I found the plans for a charging
station that would allow her to plug in her I-Pod, cell phone, blackberry,
etc. The plan was shown in Woodsmith
Magazine, Volume 30/No 176 (April/May, 2008).

What
attracted me to the design was not only the basic purpose for which the
project was designed but the use of two different types of wood creating
a contrasting appearance in the final project. In the plan from the
magazine, both poplar and maple were used. The poplar pieces were
used to form the main body and were stained a dark walnut and the maple
was left natural and clear coated.I
had a good piece of true walnut in my shop and decided to use the real
walnut in place of the stained poplar. I think that it turned out
better because of the more pronounced grain of the walnut. As you
can see in the finished photo on the left, it looks pretty good.

I started
by cutting the back pieces and the side pieces from the walnut. The
walnut board that I had in the shop was 3/4" X 12" X 48". I ripped
the board to working widths and then planed it down to the 1/2" thickness
called out in the project plan. I then used two sided tape to hold
the two end pieces together while cutting
the angles and drilling the hinge pin holes. While the sides
were still taped together, I used a 1/4" forstner bit to cut the partial
mortises for the bottom stretcher. After removing the tape, I made rabbets
across the back of the side pieces and completed the final sanding of the
two sides.

The
remaining three pieces of the walnut parts (the bottom stretcher and two
back pieces that forms the main body of the charging station) were then
cut to size. A 1/4 inch wide X 1/4" deep groove was made into the
upper back piece to hold an upper tray that was to be made out of one of
the maple pieces. After final sanding of the walnut pieces, this
part of the project had been completed and I assembled the pieces and set
them aside to await the remaining maple parts to be made. At this
point, the project looked like the photo above and to the right.

I
then moved on to the maple parts which consisted of a front access panel,
upper tray panel, upper tray front rail and a support panel (all shown
here on the left). These were all cut from a piece of 3/4" thick
hard maple that had to be planed down on my 12 inch Dewalt Model 734 planer.
I won't bore you with every little detail here but for the most part, all
but one of the maple pieces were very simple cuts.

The
access panel was kind of tough for me to make however, for a couple of
reasons (1) my table saw is an older Rockwell
Model 4-345 saw with a right tilting blade which I tend to get nervous
about when making angled cuts. Starting with a 3/4" thick piece,
I was required to make a 30° cut at 7/16" up from the bottom corner
of the board and stop at 1/2" deep into the board. (2) I then had
to set the board on its edge and rip the board up to where it met the 7/16"
deep angled cut. I had not done this before and with the right tilting
blade, it made the task scary and difficult for me. At any rate,
I got the job done (even still have all my fingers). You can see
the finished piece in the photo on the right.

The
support panel utilizes 1/8 inch brass pins that are held into the panel
by drilling holes at different spacings to accommodate various sized electronic
devices. The holes are drilled 1/4 inch deep into the panel with
1 1/8 inches protruding outward after they are pressed into the panel.
Once the pins were in place, I cut lengths of clear plastic tubing to slide
over the pins to protect instruments from getting scratched. The
access panel pivots on 1/8" brass pins and snaps shut into the sides of
the base by using 1/4" ball clasps (See left photo).

Some other
views of the charging station can be seen below at various stages of completion.
All photos can be clicked on for larger views. I am fairly well pleased
with the end results and my daughter sure was pleased as well.